Japanese, anyone~? ください TT_TT

[Izzy Reincarnated]

interesting, i take it you teach english abroad maybe? how many yrs of study does it take students to become fluent in english over there? man, the languages are so different, i can only imagine, it seems like a difficult undertaking.

You have to learn it at a young age (lower than 7-8 years old) by just taking a class or living in the country for like a very short time, otherwise your opportunity becomes lost and you will have a couple years of studying to do in a textbook.

 

[Benevoir]

Glad I can help mitzelflx! ^^

I went to Japan a month ago for the summer and I always had this language barrier between my cousins and I. This year, I strive to become fluent in Japanese... Now, how do I go about doing that? I used to be fluent in Japanese a while ago, but completely forgot everything Curse my mom for not talking to me in Japanese when I was younger!

I feel you, I really do. I've met my dad's relatives in Japan early last year for the first time and man our conversations were pretty awkward haha! I could only bond with my cousins by talking about anime (mostly SnK) and Pokemon, but otherwise I kinda struggled conversing with them. I think it's mainly because I'm self-conscious about my Japanese since even though I'm pretty fluent I have this bad habit of speaking in English whenever there's a word I forgot/don't know in Japanese. So my conversations tends to be a mix between English and Japanese, especially with my parents.

If you want to be fluent in Japanese speaking-wise I would suggest to encourage your mother to speak to you in Japanese more frequently, or if you like completely. Personally I find it the best way to improve is having a partner that you feel comfortable with and just practice your Japanese with them. If your mother is like mine you gotta be a little strict sometimes and make sure she doesn't start talking in English out of convenience. :')

If you like anime you should watch it in Japanese dub with no English subtitles (heck it might be even nice if it has Japanese subtitles!) and ask your mother if there's any word/phrases you don't understand. It doesn't have to be just anime either, if you can try watching variety shows, the news and other Japanese TV shows. Or if you like videogames and especially watching someone else play it with commentary, you can search on YouTube and find plenty of Japanese gaming channels. My personal favourite is 兄者弟者! They do play plenty of Western-released games like Witcher 3 for example, as well as some horror games like Resident Evil, Dement (I can't recall the English title atm...), etc.

It's never too late to be fluent in Japanese again! It's just going to take some time depending on how fast/how much you're learning so don't get frustrated if you find yourself struggling in the process. Try a different approach or focus on specific area (E.g. particles) if needed and mostly importantly - have fun!

 

[D3athsdoppelganger]

No I Really Wanna learn it and how to speak it tho.

 

[mirukushake]

interesting, i take it you teach english abroad maybe? how many yrs of study does it take students to become fluent in english over there? man, the languages are so different, i can only imagine, it seems like a difficult undertaking.

90% of students barely learn it at all, because the way they teach English sucks. They learn from Junior 1st to Senior 3rd (6 years) but it's taught like most other subjects like math or science, so students can kind of read and write but can't speak it at all. Only students who take the extra effort outside of school to learn English become good at it. But, that's same as any language. If you get only as much as you put in (exposure, study, etc.)

 

[Nightmares]

Okay I may be wrong but when using kudasai, it isn't used by Itself. It sounds out of place.
In the OP, I think it would be more appropriate to say おねがい onegai for "please!"
It can be used when asking for favors or begging.

Yeah, people have commented in this before >.<
Thank you!

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o_o

I took a semester of Japanese in college, so I kinnnnnd of know it lol. (I got a B TT^TT, but that was because I was lazy! I had the best sensei who was generous with my grade)
TAKE MY ADVICE WITH A GRAIN OF SALT
Ga deals with questions. You put ga at the end of the sentence. It works like a question mark.

I never mastered the wo, but it has to deal with an indirect object or something? Or a place?

Wa is practically used in everything /o/ safe bet is wa
do the wa wa wa wa


Our sensei had us learn hiragana first. He believes one day kanji will become obsolete because of how difficult it is to learn kanji. So that alone should tell you to learn hiragana and master it first. He had us learn hiragana, then we could learn katakana if we want(we had to master if we wanted to go to J2), then he gave us some kanji to remember. It was basic kanji like money, forest, water, etc. You should start slow. Learn how to make basic sentences. Don't focus on kanji first thing!! Also, hiragana is way more important that katakana. Katakana is used for foreign words!!

Definitely takes Aestivate's advice about writing it over and over again! That's how I mastered hiragana! (although I'm getting a little forgetful now since I haven't used it >>) I literally had a notebook full of hiragana+katakana from rewriting it over and over again. I'd stay many hours at night in the library constantly rewriting hiragana.

I also played a japanese mmorpg before which helped somewhat know what hiragana is what. I played the game PSO2, although it has an english patch, there's lots of hiragana and katakana around.

Woah so much info
Thanks very much ^.^

 

[Applelicious]

Which is harder to learn learning how to speak Japanese or learning how to read kanji. Cause I have always wanted to learn how to speak Japanese and learn how to read kanji so I was wondering which of the two is the hardest to learn.

 

[enchilada]

Someone here should volunteer to help teach those of us who would like to learn.

 

[Aestivate]

Which is harder to learn learning how to speak Japanese or learning how to read kanji. Cause I have always wanted to learn how to speak Japanese and learn how to read kanji so I was wondering which of the two is the hardest to learn.

Personally I would say, if we're speaking about being completely fluent speaking and completely knowing Kanji then Kanji is a lot harder. Kanji requires an enormous amount of memorize skills where as you can get used to pronounciation by practicing although fluent pronounciation will also take a a lot of time. Don't see me as an expert though since I'm not any fo the 2

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Someone here should volunteer to help teach those of us who would like to learn.

I actually think that's a good idea but there're also a lot of other platforms where you can find people to help you learn a language. I've been teaching a Brazillian guy Dutch just by sendings whatsapp messages for almost 6 months know and we met on yahoo.

 

[mirukushake]

Personally I would say, if we're speaking about being completely fluent speaking and completely knowing Kanji then Kanji is a lot harder. Kanji requires an enormous amount of memorize skills where as you can get used to pronounciation by practicing although fluent pronounciation will also take a a lot of time. Don't see me as an expert though since I'm not any fo the 2

I agree that reading can be a lot harder to learn than speaking, although it can depend on how and where you learned Japanese. I have lived in Hawaii and Japan, so I spoke Japanese much more than I read it, so becoming a fluent speaker was much easier for me. However, learning the kanji isn't particularly complicated in my opinion, it's just a lot of memorization, which can get pretty boring. But knowing kanji makes Japanese much easier, since each one represents an "idea" so even if you don't know the exact reading, if you know the idea you can (usually) guess the meaning of a word.

 

[Nightmares]

Someone here should volunteer to help teach those of us who would like to learn.

0.0 that would be awesome

 

[Applelicious]

You know I got an awesome idea I think some one should start a group on kik or on Skype that is dedicated on helping people to learn about the Japanese culture etc. And also to be able to help them out with their problems that they are having on Japanese culture like reading kanji or trying to learn how to speak Japanese etc or if they anything else about Japan.

 

[Xerolin]

I'm 11 and I've learned hiragana and currently learning katakana and kanji. I use wanikani

 

[Heyden]

I'm 13 and I'm very slooowwwly self teaching myself. I've memorised Hiragana, Katakana and all of 1st grade kanji, and I'm tackling sentence structure and particles right now ;P
never use Google translate for sentences btw, it totally stuffs it up

 

[Nightmares]

You know I got an awesome idea I think some one should start a group on kik or on Skype that is dedicated on helping people to learn about the Japanese culture etc. And also to be able to help them out with their problems that they are having on Japanese culture like reading kanji or trying to learn how to speak Japanese etc or if they anything else about Japan.

Someone do this now 0.0 xD